


House of the Waning Sun

by poisontaster



Series: Sateda Dean [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Supernatural
Genre: 5 Things, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Ficlet, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-22
Updated: 2006-09-22
Packaged: 2018-04-30 15:49:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5169518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisontaster/pseuds/poisontaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five things Dean kept from Sateda.</p>
            </blockquote>





	House of the Waning Sun

Part 1.

He couldn't hold onto much, running. And even if he'd had the opportunity to grab much—which he hadn't—the Wraith would have taken it away from him before they set him loose to wander. But he's still got that ratty lovelock of Ronon's hair tangled through his own dread, almost-black twined around dirty-blond, now anchored in, grown together. He doesn't think about what happened to Ronon. He doesn't wonder if he's alive. Sateda's gone. Ronon is gone. What's left, what's _alive_ is Dean and he plans to stay that way.

Part 2.

In a cave on a world so stripped and primitive its inhabitants only think to call it The World, Dean counts his scars. _Here_ is where he was bitten and poisoned by a kaltia, one of the great desert felines that wandered, starving and crazed, into his mother's garden. _There_ is where Samuel, his brother, forgot to pull his blow with his practice sword. The look of horror on his face had made Dean laugh, even with the blood pouring out from the wound. _This_ is the brand of his unit, a stupid, drunken affair that ended with Ronon sucking him off in a back alley so Dean 'would quit whining about the pain'. And _that_ is where he cut his wrist nearly to the bone to tempt the Wraith who held his brother down, sucking away all the years of Samuel's life after Kell betrayed them. He doesn't regret it, even though the hand is weaker now. He only regrets that he'll never be able to lock that hand around Kell's neck and watch _his_ life drain away as surely as Samuel's.

Part 3.

He _did_ lure that Wraith away, long enough for Samuel to shoot and kill it from behind. He'd crawled across the floor to his Samuel and found his brother—his baby brother—a grizzled old man, more withered than even their father when he died. "Do it," Samuel said to him, brittle hand gripping Dean's wounded wrist closed. "You know what to do. Do it. You'll need it." A moment later, Samuel died, his eyes going cloudy and fixed. Sobbing, cursing, screaming, Dean cut his brother open one-handed and lifted out his heart, still warm as if only in between beats. He ate it raw and hot and felt his brother's strength fill him, bitter as salt and bile.

Part 4.

He hasn't much time. There is running, there is foraging and there is—all too briefly—sleeping. These are the tripod legs of his days. But sometimes he needs to remember he is a man and not a hunted beast. And then he will carve in tree and stone: _Sateda was betrayed_ and the names of as many of the dead as he can remember before circumstance of his own growing sense of panic drive him onward. The first name is Samuel. Always Samuel.

Part 5.

Once (only once) there was a village—a family—that took him in. He'd been weak, delirious from injury and though he kept insisting the Wraith would come for him, they brought him into their home, bathed him, patched him and fed him more food than he'd seen in a year. He was with them three weeks, the longest period he'd touched down anywhere since Sateda fell. One night, a few nights before the whine of darts filled up the sky, they offered up their daughter, Cassi to him, as is their way. It was the first time anyone had touched him since Sateda and even longer since he'd been with a woman. He tried hard to be gentle, to be sweet, but he doesn’t know if he succeeded at either. In any case, afterwards, she kissed his forehead and put his hand over her taut, bare belly. When the Wraith came he saw her and her family to the Gate, killing everything between it and them. "Come with us," she said and Dean shook his head and said, "Go." Her father dragged her into the Gate then and Dean doesn't know what became of her or them. For their sake he hopes never to know. But rarely—the most rare of all—he wonders if anything came of the seed he planted in her, the hope and promise of Sateda and in his head, Dean imagines that it did and that it was a boy and that she named it Samuel.

**Author's Note:**

> I'd put out a call for story prompts and Sanyin (accidentally) gave me: _5 things Dean kept from Sateda._ Which, a few days later, became this, full-blown. It also has the distinction of being my first deathfic.


End file.
